Such a smart card generally comprises a body made of plastics material and provided with a cavity for receiving a microcircuit module, the module being fastened to the body, e.g. by adhesive.
At present, there exists a need to make cards, in particular smart cards, out of paper or card material. Such a material presents numerous advantages: firstly it is recyclable or indeed biodegradable, and secondly its cost is generally less than the cost of conventional plastics such as polyvinylchloride (PVC) or PVC acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) copolymer, as are conventionally used in the field. In addition, the use of fibrous material presents the advantage of reducing the amount of hydrochloric acid released during recycling of media forming card bodies.
Nevertheless, the use of cards made of paper presents certain drawbacks. The relatively porous nature of the fiber material medium in comparison with plastics materials makes the card generally more sensitive to compression forces.
Prior to being made available, a card needs to be subjected to various mechanical strength tests, in particular in compression. While performing such tests on paper cards, it has been found that the force to which the card is subjected is sufficient for the paper to be flattened so that it cannot accommodate significant bending of the module. Unfortunately, when the bending of the module becomes too great, the microcircuit carried by the module is liable to become damaged, or even to be made inoperative.
As a result, after performing such tests, a large number of microcircuit cards are considered to be faulty and end up being rejected during fabrication, which represents a non-negligible expense.